Page 74 of Playing with the Heartbreaker

Kyle peeks in. “Can I come in?”

I shrug. “How’d you find me?”

His face shows concern as he steps inside and lowers himself into a chair.

“Rhoads texted me. Said you guys had some kind of disagreement. He was worried when you didn’t answer. But he had a hunch where you might go.”

“But he didn’t come after me himself.”

“He got the hint you don’t want to talk to him at the moment. Sent me as a proxy. So…what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He glances at my uneaten muffin. “Your abandoned baked good says otherwise.” He stands up and heads back toward the door. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine.” Kyle and I have been friends for as long as I’ve known Anita. They kind of came as a package deal.

I tear off a bite of muffin and pop it into my mouth, as if finishing it will prove him wrong. Will convince him I’m fine. But it turns to sand in my mouth. I wash the bite down with coffee and put the muffin back on the desk, glaring at it as if it’s betrayed me.

He raises his brow. “Yeah?”

“No.” I count the chocolate chips in the muffin.

Kyle sits back down. “Simpson is a good guy. And whatever rep he’s got, he hasn’t earned it.”

I scoff. “You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

I pick at the muffin but don’t eat it. Just crumble it to bits on the desk. “He’s been hung up on you since freshman year.”

“What?”

Kyle laughs, then looks up at the ceiling. “He’s going to hate that I’m telling you this. But desperate times and all that. Did you know Rhoads and Graham used to be friends?”

I snort. “Right.” I squish a chip between my thumb and forefinger.

“Seriously. Unfortunately, they both liked the same girl.” Kyle nods at me.

“No.”

“Yep.”

The gears in my brain grind to a halt. “Wait, what?”

My mind flashes back to the car wash. Rhoads’s posture when Graham showed up. I thought the awkward tension was just from Graham’s and my past. But if Kyle’s telling the truth—and why would he lie about that? —it was from Graham and Rhoads’s history too.

And then when Dani bragged about Graham delivering her pizza and that I’d dated him. That tense tick of his jaw.

“Graham was supposed to talk Rhoads up to you.”

All of my muscles still. The coffee turns to magma in my stomach. “But he asked me out himself instead.”

Kyle nods.

Back at that party with Graham, when I’d thought of Rhoads as Porch Guy and a cocky striker and the guy who’d handed me a water bottle, he’d been interested in me. That night I’d wondered, just for a second, what it would have been like to be there with Rhoads instead.

I’d felt guilty for the thought, never knowing if Graham possessed a shred of loyalty that could have been a reality. More to myself than to Kyle I say, “I can’t believe he liked me back then.”